## How Eli Lilly’s Weight-Loss Empire Started
If only Eli Lilly & Co. had heeded Richard DiMarchi’s advice, it could have led the $80 billion weight-loss drug market. Three decades ago, DiMarchi, a scientist at the Indianapolis-based drugmaker, was researching a gut hormone called glucagon-like peptide-1. In a small trial, he demonstrated that an infusion of the hormone led to weight loss in humans. The potential was so significant that he and a colleague filed a patent. Should Lilly have developed a product using this technology, it would have had exclusive rights to sell the weight management treatment for at least a decade.
